


Five Goodbyes and One Hello

by DoubleNegative



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: 5+1 Things, Book: A Study in Scarlet, Book: The Sign of the Four, Canon Era, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Retirement, Story: His Last Bow, Story: The Adventure of the Dying Detective, Story: The Final Problem, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 07:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2183871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleNegative/pseuds/DoubleNegative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times John Watson said goodbye and one time he said hello: six moments in the life of John H. Watson, M.D., late of the Army Medical Department</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Goodbyes and One Hello

**V. 1928**

I have said goodbye to him too many times already.

It is a selfish thought, but I cannot shake it.

I have never been a terribly religious man (and Holmes even less so), not least because of the quickness of some God-fearing people to consider an eternity of hellfire our just reward for many years of faithful love. Nevertheless, I cannot quite believe that the spirit dies along with the body, and the old familiar words, ingrained into my bones as they are, still provide a measure of comfort.

So when I turn to my Bible at last, it falls open to a well-thumbed page, and my mind’s eye fills in the words even as tears blur my vision: “For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.” If there is a heaven ahead for Holmes and me, I hope it is as Paul describes: a place where we may at last know fully, as we have been fully known.

Beside me, Holmes stirs, and I set the Bible aside quickly, turning to face him. He smiles as his eyes open, and I am struck yet again by the gauntness of his face and the waxy paleness of his skin. He is fading fast, as his lungs fail him, but his eyes are as bright and keen as they have always been, and they fix on mine with the same sharp, fond affection they have always held. “Still in that awful chair, dear boy?” he asks.

“Of course,” I reply, in as light a tone as I can manage. “I am quite comfortable.”

“Mmm.” His eyes narrow and I sense that he can see through my false cheer, although he mercifully does not mention it. Instead, he pats the bed beside him. “Come a little closer, Watson. I don’t think I shall stay awake long, but I know I shall sleep better with you here.” His voice is much weaker than it was even this morning; I can hear the breath rasping in his lungs.

I swallow hard against the sudden knot of emotion in my throat and blink my eyes hard against the burn of tears. I am not ashamed to cry--if anyone is worth my weeping, it is assuredly Holmes--but I would rather save my tears for my private hours. We have so little time left; I would not burden it with more sorrow than it already contains. I smile instead, and hope it is not too terribly bittersweet. “Of course.” I slip off my shoes--my jacket and waistcoat are already draped over the back of my chair--and climb into the bed beside him, resting one hand on his chest and letting him tuck his face into the crook of my neck. He sighs, evidently content. “Thank you, old boy,” he whispers. His eyes are already drifting shut. To my astonishment, I can feel my own doing the same. I have not been sleeping well of late--I am not sure I shall ever feel quite rested again--but I am loathe to drift off now. I do not think Holmes will wake again, and it seems unthinkable to spend these final hours asleep.

And yet, how much comfort have I found, over the years, in the simple act of climbing into bed next to him and falling asleep with the sound of his breath in my ears? It is the same for Holmes, I know--so perhaps it would not be so wrong after all, to fall asleep together one final time.

I close my eyes at last, and we drift together.

 

**IV. 1912**

I was, by then, a man of sixty: a widower, a veteran of the Indian campaign, a survivor of a Jezail bullet and enteric fever. I have known loss, hunger, pain, and difficult times. In sum, I should have had the wisdom to know that ignoring a problem will neither banish nor solve it--all the more so when the problem is a matter between lovers.

Nevertheless, that is what I tried to do, all through the spring and summer of 1912. The news coming from the continent, and from America, grew worse by the day, and every newspaper delivered brought with it an air of growing unease. Neither our remove from London nor  Holmes’s near-decade of retirement protected him from the ever-increasing pressure to emerge from his self-imposed isolation one last time, in service to his country.

That this service would entail considerable danger and require several years of his life, not to mention all the skills of disguise and dissembling that he possessed, seemed to concern them not one whit.

I myself could not share their attitude. Neither, of course, could I explain why. In the face of troubles the world over, it would be unthinkable to declare that my selfish desire for Holmes’s companionship was worth more than the safety of our nation, just as it would be unthinkable to publicly proclaim why, exactly, I desired his companionship so.

As long as Holmes was determined to go through with this plan, I could do nothing, it seemed, but stand aside and watch him prepare to spend several years abroad under a false identity.

He spent the months before his departure preparing and practicing the disguises under which he would spend the next few years. Within a few weeks he could slip on their accents and mannerisms as easily as an old coat, and slip them back off just as easily. Although I knew his success--indeed, his survival--depended on the veracity of his performance, the habit still galled me. It felt as though he was leaving me long before his actual departure, and offering a stranger in his place.

"For the love of God," I finally burst out one day at supper. "Can you not speak to me as yourself? It is Sherlock Holmes I wish to dine with, not this invented American."

His eyes glittered dangerously at my outburst, but otherwise his face remained schooled to its usual impassivity. “Once upon a time, you found my disguises amusing.”

“Once upon a time, your disguises did not threaten to take you away from me for years at a time!” I retorted, all my suppressed anger bubbling to the surface. “Once upon a time, I had faith that you would return to me at the end of every night!”

Holmes had not really been moving before, and yet I felt him still abruptly, and the heated light in his eyes turned to ice. He drew a slow breath and his already impeccable posture straightened further. “Do you really doubt my faithfulness? After all these years, do you really think me so inconstant?”

The very steadiness of his voice proved how deeply I had cut him, and I felt a pang of regret, but it could not outweigh the anger that roiled in my stomach. “I know you will return, if you can,” I said, grudgingly. “But I wish you had not always found it quite so easy to leave me.”

Another man might have missed the way he flinched at my words, but another man would not have my thirty years’ experience in reading the subtle tells that flashed across Holmes’s familiar, aristocratic face. Another wave of remorse swelled up, stronger this time, and I felt my anger begin to dissipate. “Shall we really play that game?” he said softly. “Have there not been hurts enough on both sides? I cannot deny I have left you before, and I shall always regret those years I allowed you to believe me dead. But this will not be as that was, and I swear to God that I shall return to you, just as I have always done before.”

“You cannot promise that,” I said, meeting his eyes as steadily as I was able. “We are older, and the world less safe. You cannot promise that.”

Holmes smiled, softly and a little sadly. “Watson, I tell you that I will return to you, hale and hearty. Have you ever known me to be wrong?”

“Yes,” I replied, and I could not help but return his smile. “More often than I’ve led the public to believe, in fact.”

“Granted,” he said with a slight nod, and the echo of his smile still playing about his lips. “But have I ever lied to you? Or broken my word to you in even the smallest matter?”

“You have not,” I admitted.

“Nor shall I break it now,” he said, and reaching across the table, he raised my fingers to his lips. That small tender gesture washed away the last of my anger like the detritus of the morning’s tide, and when he rose from the table and moved towards the bedroom with an invitation in his eyes, I did not hesitate to follow him.

 

****III. 1891**  
**

It felt like a honeymoon. Later, of course, the events at the Reichenbach Falls and Holmes’s apparent death at the hands of Professor Moriarty cast an inescapable pall over the days preceding. Even now I cannot recall them without some measure of grief. But at the time…

I had left London tired, worn down by the demands of my practice and the domesticity of married life, and I returned brokenhearted and in mourning--but the days between glowed with a golden light.

I have since wondered whether Holmes knew the outcome of our journey from the beginning, but I have never had the courage to ask. Our friendship has changed and deepened since Holmes’s return, but some things still strike too close to the bone. Those days we spent traveling Europe, however, stand out in my memory as showing Holmes at his sharpest and brightest, his laughter louder and his smiles wider. We strolled the avenues of Paris and Vienna arm-in-arm, chatting of this or that, or simply basked in the contented silence of two men who know each other intimately.

I wonder now if Holmes did this deliberately--if he was, perhaps, storing up the memories the way bees store up honey to survive the winter, and if he pulled them out to warm his hands over while he lived his lonely exile, as I have done so often in my own grief. (This notion, I am sure, would be the “incurable romanticism” which Holmes so often--and fondly, whatever he says--accuses me of. Well, I cannot help it.)

We toured the Continent, and for all that we were pursuing a notorious criminal mastermind (and being pursued by him in our turn), it seemed to me like a honeymoon. We were no longer in the first blush of our friendship, to be sure, but it felt like a rediscovery nevertheless--a renewal, a reawakening.

And then, he fell.

The terrible, intractable roar of those mighty falls still echoes in my ears some nights, when I am awake and alone, in that liminal time between midnight and dawn. That sound has largely replaced the screams of dying men and horses and the thunder of artillery that woke me, sweating and gasping, in my younger years. Now all I see is Holmes, tumbling, falling, breaking and sinking under. And on the very worst nights, even his body beside mine, lean and gloriously warm, provides meager comfort.

The thing itself happened much as I described it in _the Strand_ , but what I did not say--what I could not say--in those pages could fill another essay, if I thought I could bear to write it.

It is true that at that time, our friendship had not yet moved beyond the realm of the lawful and platonic, though I believe the desire already existed, on both our sides.  Nevertheless, I must confess that his loss carved into me every bit as deeply as the loss of my Mary the following year. I felt, in all honesty, like a widower, long before I became one in actual fact, and when I wore my mourning clothes for Mary, I quietly wore them for Holmes as well.

 

**II. 1890**

I admit that for all my good intentions, I never did quite manage, during the early years of my marriage, to maintain the same level of friendship with Holmes that we had during my bachelor days. It was understandable in some ways: although I married a patient and generous woman, my first duty must still be to my wife and not to old friends, however dear. Nevertheless, I considered Holmes one of my closest friends, and while we did not converse daily, I believed that I still kept current on the news of his life. An incident in the second year of my marriage, however, forced me to reconsider this position. I would not have known a thing about it had Mrs. Hudson not called me back to Baker Street, where Holmes lay in apparent misery, seemingly on the edge of death.

Later, of course, he revealed the entire incident to be a complex charade, plot to flush out a murderer. But his playacting had me so wholly convinced that I still cannot recall the event without remembered the fear the clutched my heart when I saw him in such distress. The hectic flush staining his aristocratic cheekbones, his fever-bright eyes, the restless twitching of his elegant hands on the coverlet: these pained me, I think, nearly as much as they did him. And yet they paled in comparison to the degradation of his crystalline mind, now muddy and sluggish. I could still hear his disjointed ramblings on the feelings of batteries and the balance of the coins in my pocket echoing in my ears as I sat in the cab on my way to fetch Culverton Smith to Holmes’s bedside.

It galled me that he would not allow me to examine him, though I now realize that doing so would have revealed his game immediately. Admittedly, I am a generalist, with no particular speciality in tropical diseases, but it would have eased my mind considerably nonetheless. During my time in India and Afghanistan, I had relied on my professional duties to carry me through times of great stress. Though bullets may fly about me, though men and horses may scream in my very ear, I can remain calm, so long as there is work to be done. But Holmes had deprived me of that distraction--even, I may say, of that comfort--and left me with nothing to do except worry, and call upon the mysterious stranger whose counsel he demanded.

As the cab carried me to Smith’s residence, every jostle and jolt seemed to shake my closely-held composure more. Once I was alone, without Holmes to attend or Mrs. Hudson to comfort, I could not avoid the truth: that I might not see Holmes alive again. The prospect terrified me.

The more I tried to put the thought from my head, and to focus my attention on my task, the more its tendrils seemed to wind their way around my heart. I felt as though I had an iron band wrapped around my chest, constricting every breath. I have seen friends die before, both suddenly and after long illnesses, but the prospect of another loss had never seemed so unbearable.

The tightness in my chest increased as I imagined the long years ahead, without cases to enliven them, without strains of violin music floating down the stairs, without the warmth of Holmes’s arm looped through mine. How dull life would be without him, how lonely and how very cold. Our first meeting had shaken me out the comfortless, meaningless existence which had defined my life after my injury, and I feared that if Holmes died, even my marriage and new practice would not keep me from that state again.

Readers of _the Strand_ will know the conclusion to this tale already: that Holmes’s illness was entirely feigned, in order to elicit a confession from Culverton Smith, that Holmes would not let me near lest I discover the trick, and that the success of my role depended entirely on my ignorance of playing any role at all. I understand now why he acted as he did--I have always been a poor actor--but I truly believed, as I left him, that I might have said my final farewell.

 

**I. 1888**

When I met Miss Mary Morstan and resolved to marry her, and to renew my medical practice at the same time, leaving Baker Street seemed like no great obstacle. Holmes and I were friends, certainly; in fact he was the closest friend I had had in many years, not to mention the most intriguing. Still, I saw no reason our friendship could not continue much as it had before, and after years of army life and bachelor accommodations, the lure of domesticity and the comforts of married life beckoned most temptingly. When I discovered that an old acquaintance was selling his practice, and with it the flat of rooms above, it seemed too perfect an opportunity to pass up.

Holmes’s increased recourse to his cocaine bottle as the day of my marriage approached worried me, both as a friend and a medical man, but he swore I had nothing to fear. Holmes is very persuasive when it suits him, and I had my own happiness to distract me besides.

He did not attend my wedding at all, having taken a case in Odessa, and even after he returned to London, I saw very little of him for sometime afterward. Perhaps I had been naive to think that our lives could continue on as they had before my marriage, to believe that I could have my wife and medical practice on the one hand and a life of adventure with Holmes on the other. I will admit to more than one quiet evening, sitting before the fire with Mary, in which my mind wandered from the scene of domestic bliss before me to dwell on a different fireside with a different companion, port to hand and tobacco smoke swirling around us both, and always the prospect of a new case on the morrow.

Even when he did invite me to assist him, he rarely visited the rooms I shared with Mary, preferring to summon me by telegram or with a message from one of his Irregulars. Mary’s invitations to dinner he also declined, and after a time she ceased issuing them.

At last, when the silence between us had stretched too long, I decided to visit him. The hour was later than was entirely appropriate for a social call, but Holmes had never kept regular hours, and the notion, once fixed in my mind, became impossible to shake. Nevertheless I stood outside the door of 221 for some moments, weighing my course of action, before I resolved to go up. The lights in his rooms were blazing; I even fancied I saw his unmistakable silhouette pass by the window. That pushed me into action at last, and I rang the bell and let Mrs. Hudson, beaming with delight, show me up.

Holmes did not seem surprised--or indeed, terribly pleased--to see me, but I fancied that after so many months of acquaintance, I could read the subtle signs of happiness on his features. After all, he had never been a particularly effusive man, except where particularly interesting chemical reactions were concerned.

He waved me to my accustomed chair--I smiled to see it still in its old place--and settled back into his own, taking slow drags on his pipe and letting the smoke curl about his head. For a moment, I could do nothing but take in the scene before me, so perfectly did it match my idle woolgathering by my own fireside.

I found, however, that the conversation did not come as naturally as it once had. I was no longer absorbed in the day-to-day minutiae of Holmes’s cases, and the routine of married life did not make for thrilling tales. Neither, it seemed, did my practice or the foibles and follies of my patients. The quiet between us, at first so comfortable, quickly turned awkward, and I wondered whether I would have done better not to visit at all. Not every friendship could be a lifelong affair, after all. Though I had initially imagined that Holmes and I might have the sort of enduring partnership for which I had so often longed, perhaps it was not be be, as our lives diverged. The prospect filled me with strange regret, for all that I knew it was simply a vagary of fate.

Finally, the stretching silences and stilted conversation became too much to bear, and I stood to take my leave. Holmes stood with me, and extended his hand. “I am sorry, my boy,” he said. “I have been unforgivably distracted this evening. I do hope you will not take it as a personal affront; I have simply been wrestling over a number of... thorny problems.”

I took his hand in both of mine, and shook it warmly. “You’ve nothing to apologize for; it is my doing as well. I have neglected our friendship most abominably of late.”

“Well, as you are still a newlywed, I think I shall excuse it,” Holmes said, sounding fond despite his dry tones. “But if your wife can spare you for another evening, I have a pair of tickets to the orchestra tomorrow night, and I should welcome your company.”

I smiled, my worry and discomfort easing. “I should be delighted, Holmes. Till tomorrow then, then.”

I descended the seventeen steps to the street, my heart much lighter than it had been when I ascended an hour prior, already anticipating the pleasure of our trip to the orchestra the next evening.

 

** & I. 1881 **

My first impression of Sherlock Holmes was one of boisterous energy and triumphant joy. He came bounding across the chemical laboratory the moment Stamford opened the door, a beaker of some mysterious substance held aloft and a wide smile lighting his face. “I’ve found it!” he exclaimed, offering no word of greeting or introduction whatsoever, simply diving right into an explanation of his “Sherlock Holmes test.” It was, I own, an impressive discovery, with undeniably valuable applications for police work. Still, it was not his chemical skills that I found myself turning over in my mind after I left, but the flush of discovery on his cheeks and the small crinkled lines at the corners of his eyes. Whether they came from smiling or from squinting into his microscope, I could not say, but I found them unbearably charming nonetheless.

Sherlock Holmes was, of course, as singular a man as Stamford had made him out to be, although even our short meeting made it clear that he defied all easy description. His enthusiasm for chemistry, it seemed, was rivalled only by his enthusiasm for the strange and macabre, and he rattled off a list of criminals and their crimes with something approaching glee--a “walking calendar of crime,” as Stamford so aptly put it.

I was entranced.

Assuming the rents on the suite of rooms in Baker Street were not exorbitant, I could see no reason not to take digs with him. If he could tolerate my poor health, strange hours, and general unsociability, then I saw no reason to fear his sulks or his chemical experiments, and I looked forward to hearing his violin. Although I had initially found it refreshing after months of army barracks and hospital wards, I was tired of living alone, and Holmes seemed a most diverting flatmate, despite Stamford’s mysterious warnings.

The next morning I awoke more refreshed than I had been in years. I walked through London with an unfamiliar spring in my step, my walking stick tapping only lightly on the pavement beside me. Soon I would be out of my lonely hotel room and back into central London, taking rooms with the most intriguing person I could ever recall meeting. For a man who had spent the last few months alone in London, in ill health, with few friends and no family, the prospect was dizzying.

Mrs. Hudson, the housekeeper and landlady, showed me up to the rooms. Holmes was there already, standing before the sitting room windows with his hands in his pockets. The bright afternoon light cast his tall, lean figure into silhouette and set his dark hair shining. He turned slowly when I entered the room, a smile spreading across his face and crinkling the corners of his eyes  as he crossed the room towards me, a hand extended in greeting.

I clasped his hand firmly, feeling the rasp of his callouses and small scars on my palm and the warmth of his long fingers around mine. An unaccountable smile broke across my face. “Hello, Holmes.”

**Author's Note:**

> I mentioned that "Demonstrable Appreciation" was my first published canon fic, but this one, begun in the spring, is the first one I tried. It owes quite a lot to mazarin221b and Prurient_curiosity, whose insightful beta-reads made this story 187% better. Additionally, I'd like to thank Alter for the cheerleading; seriously, no writer could ask for better.
> 
> Notes relating to the actual story: I used [this timeline](http://webpages.charter.net/lklinger/Chrotabl.htm) for the dates and chronology of most things (except Holmes's death, I pulled that one out of thin air), which is largely based on Baring-Gould. I ignored his assertion that John Watson married three damn times, because I think we can all agree that's a little excessive.
> 
> The Bible verse quoted in the first vignette is 1 Corinthians 13:12, from the King James Bible. (It follows directly after the much better known "love is patient, love is kind" bit.) The English Revised Version was published 1881-1885, but a man of Watson's age would have grown up with the KJV.
> 
> If you are interested in Sherlock Holmes's excellent hair, recreational Johnlock, and occasional excerpts from my terrible childhood adventure novel, you're welcome to [join me on Tumblr](http://www.onethousandhurrahs.tumblr.com/).


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